Zootopia is a seemingly unconventional Disney animated feature released during the would-be off season. That's what makes it interesting and potentially exciting.
Walt Disney dropped a trailer for Zootopia yesterday. It was a barebones teaser, with just the premise being laid out via Jason Bateman narration with just a bit of character introductions offered on a white screen. With no hint of plot or conflict, this was an announcement teaser for a film that wasn't really on many peoples' radars. It takes place in a world without humans, whereby animals of all kinds are now fully anthropomorphized. It's odd that they had to explain that as (for example) the 1970′s Robin Hood needed no explanation. But maybe Disney was tired of having to answer all of the horrifyingly disturbing questions concerning the Cars/Planes universe (note: Planes: Fire and Rescue is the best Planet of the Apes sequel ever made). What is interesting is that the film isn't a grand adventure saga or sweeping fairy tale epic. It is basically a crime comedy, a "reluctant partners" story about a fox (Jason Bateman) who is framed for a crime and the bunny (Ginnifer Goodwin) who must bring him in and presumably discovers the truth and helps clear his name. If that doesn't sound like a typical Walt Disney animated feature in this day-and-age, that's because Zootopia is a rare in-house Walt Disney Studios animated "B-movie."
Zootopia comes out on March 4th, 2016, and it is not remotely the would-be main event for Walt Disney next year. They've got Finding Dory coming June 17th, 2016 and then they have the (presumably) sweeping Polynesian-set period piece adventure Moana for November 23rd, 2016. Of those three, you can probably guess which one is least likely to get a Best Animated Feature Academy Award nomination come early 2017. It's been awhile since Walt Disney put out what you could consider (by their standards) a B-movie cartoon. Just in terms of recent history, this goes back to around 1995, where they had the glorified DTV offering A Goofy Movie in the spring before the big summer release (Pocahontas) and the Pixar spectacular Toy Story over Thanksgiving.
But that doesn't mean that every would-be B-movie is a glorified TV adaptation akin to Return to Neverland or The Tigger Movie. Back in 2000, the big event was Dinosaur while Disney unleashed the offbeat and unconventional (and famously troubled) The Emperor's New Groove in mid-December. That brings up another important point: The would-be second priority feature in the box office food chain sometimes becomes the top dog in terms of quality. Quick, do you prefer Dinosaur or The Emperor's New Groove? That's what I thought. And while I may be in the minority opinion, I'm the freak who loves Ratatouille but loves Meet the Robinsons even more. Now to be fair, over the last twenty years, the majority of so-called B-movies (which for the record is my own simplistic labeling) were theatrical pictures that barely went to theaters or came from other production houses. They were films like Gnomeo and Juliet, Planes, and Mars Needs Moms. Obviously the Robert Zeme ckis-produced or directed motion-capture films were not cheap, but few will argue that A Christmas Carol was more of a priority for Walt Disney in 2009 than Up.
Having said that, the positioning of A Christmas Carol in early November did (I have long argued) real damage to Walt Disney's The Princess and the Frog which was prevented from opening wide on Thanksgiving weekend like it darn well should have. But generally the various animated projects don't clash with each other. It's not like The Wild caused any problems for Cars back in 2006. What's interesting about Zootopia is that it is indeed a pure Walt Disney production released outside of the prime season (early March, just as The Wild was in mid-April), which is rather unusual for the so-called off-season release. Disney hasn't released a big-scale in-house animated production in the off-season since Meet the Robinsons back in March of 2007. Truth be told, Disney spent much of the last 10-15 years (post-Lilo & Stitch, pre-Princess and the Frog) in a place where the Walt Disney animated feature itself was a glorified B-movie companion to the year's Pix ar release, with the likes of Chicken Little and Bolt being presented as "the one that gets Disney its luster back." Yes, Chicken Little was a big release and a solid hit ($314m worldwide on a $150m budget) in November, 2005, an attempt to score big with CGI animation and establish a new mascot character outside of Pixar and the princess line-up.
It says something that Disney is strong enough in the aftermath of Frozen and Big Hero 6 to again strong enough to offer an A-level Disney, an A-level Pixar, and a B-level Disney animated feature in the same calendar year. And the reason that this "matters" beyond my own curiosity is that the so-called B-movie allows that much more variety in terms of the kinds of animated stories and kinds of animated characters Disney can create. The likes of Zootopia doesn't necessarily have to be a grand and sweeping adventure in the classic Disney tradition or what-have-you. It can be a crazy word-play based comedy like The Emperor's New Groove, a dazzlingly creative and heartbreaking time travel adventure like Meet the Robinsons, or it can be a delightful throwback like Winnie the Pooh. Zootopia may not be the best or grandest Disney animated feature in 2016. But by virtue of its lower profile status and its existence as one of three, it has the freedom to be a little off beat, a little quirky, a little out of the conventional Disney wheelhouse, as for that matter do the other two films by virtue of the same volume. Maybe Zootopia will magically end up being better than Finding Dory and Moana. All due respect, when is the last time you quoted Dinosaur?
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